


Said and Unsaid

by Trobadora



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Abandonment Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 02:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the last thing Jack sees: the lock engaging, drenching everything in a wash of blue light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Said and Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "45, Sapphire, Librarian Thrace, The Imprisonment of Kherool" in the [Summer/Winter Holidays 2013](http://wintercompanion.livejournal.com/209812.html) challenge.

"I'm so sorry, Jack."

This is what Jack sees: the Doctor's hand, clenched on the control. The Sapphyrite crystal sliding into place. The Doctor's eyes, ancient and sad and heavy. 

This is the last thing Jack sees: the lock engaging, drenching everything in a wash of blue light.

~*~

"Come travel with me again," the Doctor had said, and not for the first time. He'd looked tired and old, leaning against the door of his TARDIS, fingers twisted into his braces, studying the toes of his polished shoes.

Jack had wanted to say: I can't be the one you drag along to make you see the world with fresh eyes. He'd wanted to say: I no longer qualify. Deep underneath, there'd been some part that had thought: I don't deserve it.

What he'd said was, "Yes."

~*~

"That's quite enough," the Doctor had said.

Jack had ignored him, his gaze lingering lingered on the walls instead, on the controls, the time rotor, the floor. So different now. He'd turned slowly around 360 degrees, whistling to himself. "Oh, you're _gorgeous_ ," he'd breathed, reaching over to trail his fingers along the nearest wall. Very steampunk, very beautiful.

The TARDIS had produced a pleased hum. 

The Doctor, instead, had produced a pout. It had made him look even younger. "Hello? Stop it!"

A familiar turn of phrase in a still unfamiliar voice. Jack had ignored the slight tightening in his chest. "You're just jealous," he'd said lightly.

"Well, when not even Jack Harkness will flirt with me, I do have to wonder. Do I just have a face that no one fancies?"

Jack had turned around, laughing. "Anyone who notices _your_ looks with _this_ beauty around" - he'd made an extravagant gesture encompassing the whole of the TARDIS - "just has no soul." He'd walked up to the Doctor, looked him up and down. "Don't worry, you're gorgeous too."

When the expected rebuff hadn't come, he hadn't quite known what to say.

~*~

"You know we both want this," the Doctor had said, crowding Jack against the walls of the TARDIS's gorgeous new control room.

 _I have no idea what you want_ , Jack hadn't said. A diversion, maybe. In between adventures, when the Time Lord equivalent of adrenaline ebbed, what did the Doctor do to keep himself from going out of his mind with boredom?

He found something to play with for those manic hands, so incapable of remaining still for any length of time. Touch and taste, fingers grasping, bodies frantically surging against each other - that would do. 

The lassitude afterwards might help, too.

Jack was good for that, he supposed. He'd gone with the flow.

~*~

Now, above, the crystal glows blue. The Doctor has engaged the Sapphyrite lock, and Jack knows it won't be broken for a very long time. Decades to come.

It's the curse of knowing. Time is flexible, but only to a degree. 

They were there, after all, before they travelled back to the start of it: listening to Librarian Thrace's story, hearing of Kherool's sacrifice. The steady glow of the crystal is - will be - a matter of historic record. Given what will happen if it ever stops, Jack has little doubt in its accuracy.

The Doctor has closed the lock, and for at least 45 years, it will remain in place. Jack stares helplessly into the curtain of light, which is keeping the vortex rupture safely contained.

At the prison the Doctor has locked himself in.

~*~

"Are you saying you want me to stop?" the Doctor had exclaimed, incredulous, the next time.

Jack had closed his hands around those impatient fingers, had held them still. Had pushed the Doctor away, at arm's length. "I'm not who I used to be," he'd said, not even sure himself what he meant. Not as easygoing? Not as desperate for any crumb the Doctor might throw his way? Maybe just no longer the kind of man who thought, even for a moment, that he could give the Doctor what he needed.

"I know," the Doctor had answered. Merely that: "I know." But there had seemed to be an edge of despair underneath the Doctor's aborted attempts at an expansive gesture, stilled only by Jack's hold.

"So, _do_ you want me to stop?" the Doctor had asked again, after a moment. He'd fallen still after all, and no longer looked young at all. His eyes were shrouded with age, his features seemed to belie their youthful skin. And he was focused on Jack, completely, a depth of intensity almost dizzying. Jack had felt captured in it, a rabbit before a snake.

"... No," Jack had said, eventually.

~*~

"Run!" the Doctor had shouted, and they'd run.

They'd ducked around a Tellian market stall, pushed through a group of Khandykkian tourists and squeezed through the narrow gap between a vendor's hut and the barrels of _kreeva_ stacked beside it. Then they were at the edge, where the market met the walls of the High Temple, and they'd rushed along, breathless and exhilarated.

The shouts behind them never managed to catch up.

When they'd tumbled into the TARDIS, they'd caught their breath only to lose it again from laughter, and then from something else. The Doctor had pressed his manic grin into Jack's skin, and Jack had found the ticklish spot at the small of the Doctor's back.

A laughing tangle of limbs. A surge of pure joy. And then, with a jolt of dread, Jack had realised he was growing used to this.

~*~

"You're leaving, then," the Doctor had said.

He'd rubbed his hands over his biceps, the tweed bunching under his palms, as if he were cold. 

Jack had looked down, silent. What could he have said? 

The Doctor had come closer, into Jack's space. Had thrown up his hands, and scrunched his face into one of those grimaces he always did when there were too many words, or too few. In the end, he'd settled on, "One last adventure?"

Jack had pulled him close, desperately, had crushed their bodies together, had pushed his tongue into the Doctor's mouth, sweeping over teeth and gums and tongue. Memorising, perhaps.

It had been hard to let go. But the Doctor had left him behind often enough. Just this once, he'd be the one walking away.

"Yes," he'd said, in the end. One last trip.

 _Sorry,_ he hadn't said. _Sorry I can't be what you need._

~*~

"It should have been me," Jack tells the curtain of light, numbly, helplessly.

Inside, unreachable, is the Doctor. The mechanism will keep his body in something akin to stasis, only rousing him whenever the Sapphyrite matrix begins to slip out of alignment. Every few months, he'll spend half an hour harmonising, tuning, realigning. Then his body will hibernate again.

His body, but not his mind. He'll go stir-crazy within the first five minutes. The man who couldn't manage to sit still for five minutes, locked in place, conscious, for years? Jack tries not to imagine it.

_He chose this._

They'd meant to find another solution. Kherool had been ready to take her place inside the lock, a living sacrifice suspended inside, keeping her planet safe. They'd meant to spare her that. But the strength of the vortex rupture had taken them by surprise. 

They'd looked at each other. Jack had thought they understood each other; he'd thought he knew what he was seeing in the Doctor's eyes. He'd been wrong.

It repeats in his mind, again and again: Jack, ready to take Kherool's place - and the Doctor, elbowing him aside.

It should have been Jack. It would have been Jack, if he'd even thought ... But he'd not realised, and the Doctor had been faster. To save Kherool, yes, but more than that, to save _Jack_.

He chose this. For Jack.

Too late now. Too late for this; too late to understand. 

Jack, left behind, leans against a wall and tries not to cry.


End file.
